About Me

I was a reporter and columnist for 40 years for a chain of newspapers in the suburbs of Chicago. I'm a military veteran having served in the United States Army Combat Engineers (Cpl. E-4) and a Korean War veteran with an Honorable Discharge from the Armed Forces of the United States of America

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

There has been a lot of talk recently that the Bush administration is making plans to attack Iran.

We now have three reports all courtesy of Citizens for a Legitimate Government at http://www.legitgov.org/ giving details of what an Israeli newspaper, a Army radio station and a top US officer are saying about the plans to attack Iran. Be sure to click on the part in "BLUE" to read further details.

White House denies imminent plans to attack Iran --Report: President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney believe military action needed 20 May 2008 The White House on Tuesday dismissed an Israeli media report that President [sic] Bush intends to attack Iran before his term ends in January. The Jerusalem Post article cited an Israeli Army Radio report that quoted a "senior official in Jerusalem" saying a "senior member of the president's entourage" claimed
Bush and Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney thought military action was called for against Tehran.

White House denies Army Radio report on plan to attack Iran 20 May 2008 The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President [sic] George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who visited Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.

Military officer: Iran jeopardizing 'peace' in Iraq 20 May 2008 The top uniformed U.S. military officer told Congress Tuesday that Iran is directly jeopardizing any potential for peace in Iraq, prompting fresh calls from senators that the U.S. pursue diplomatic talks with Tehran. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that "irresponsible actions" by Iran's Revolutionary Guard "directly jeopardize" 'peace' in Iraq. [*What* peace in Iraq?]

BAGHDAD — The commander of United States troops in Baghdad asked local leaders and tribal sheiks this weekend for their forgiveness after the discovery that a soldier had used a Koran for target practice at a shooting range.Responding to an episode ripe with the potential to stoke unrest, the commander, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, held a meeting Saturday with Iraqi leaders.

“I come before you here seeking your forgiveness,” General Hammond said at the meeting, in remarks carried by CNN. “In the most humble manner, I look in your eyes today and I say, please forgive me and my soldiers.”

General Hammond also read a letter of apology from the soldier, who was not identified. “I sincerely hope that my actions have not diminished the partnership that our two nations have developed together,” the general read from the letter.

Another American officer kissed a Koran and gave it to the tribal leaders, according to news agency reports.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush called Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to apologize after an American soldier riddled a Koran with bullets near Baghdad, the White House said Tuesday.

Bush "apologized for that in the sense that he said we take it very seriously," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino told reporters.

"We were concerned about their reaction, we wanted them to know that the president knew that this was wrong, and that the commanders in the field had publicly reprimanded the soldier and removed him from Iraq," she added.

Now the US House of Representatives are saying they wouldn't rule out military action against Iran. Have they all gone mad?What do they plan to fight Iran with? The US military is already stretched to the breaking point and going to war with Iran would eventually mean ground troops in Iran and we don't have them. The United States has lost its moral compass.Editorial comment by Bill Corcoran, editor of CORKSPHERE.US wants Iran military option on table

Nancy Pelosi, surrounded by a congressional delegation in IsraelLeaders of the US House of Representatives say they do not rule out any option including a military action against the Islamic Republic. Speaking at a news conference at Israel's parliament, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House majority leader Steny Hoyer answered in favor to questions by journalists if a military action should be taken against Iran. Pelosi said a 'full array of tactics are on the table' in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. House majority leader Steny Hoyer supported the idea of a military action against Iran, insisting that "no options should be taken off the table". The high-ranking 13-member congressional delegation is on a four-day visit to Israel on the 60th anniversary of the Zionist regime. US officials have a long history of trying to portray Iran and its nuclear program as a major threat to the region in a bid to curry favor with Israel -- Washington's number one ally in the Middle East.

He can see it in his mind: the clean, tastefully decorated hospital wards, the well-stocked pharmacies, the gleaming laboratory equipment, the thickly carpeted consulting rooms, the halfway houses and outreach teams that help chronically ill patients re-establish their lives outside the hospital.

He has witnessed such things firsthand. In 2005, he left Iraq to spend five months in England, learning specialized care for the elderly and watching psychiatrists at work.

But Dr. Hussain, who entered his profession at a time when Iraqi doctors were among the most sophisticated and highly trained in the Middle East, is caught in a time warp in a war-torn land where knowledge and sophistication have been largely overwhelmed by third-world decay, and ancient equipment has plunged some treatments into a “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” barbarism, despite the best intentions.

He cares for patients whose illnesses are often set off or worsened by the mayhem around them, who crowd into his tiny office at Ibn Rushid psychiatric hospital in central Baghdad, accompanied by their mothers and aunts, wives and brothers.

The litany of death and misery they recite no longer shocks him.

“We are used to hearing it, and I think our emotions are frozen,” he says.Besides, his own experiences are not that different. Like many other Iraqis, he suffers from some symptoms of traumatic stress: insomnia, anxiety, a tendency to start at loud noises.“The traffic jams, this is a stress, then all of a sudden something explodes,” he said.

He tries when he can to listen to relaxing music. The trips to the countryside he once enjoyed are no longer an option. The roads are too perilous.

"I was ordered multiple times by commissioned officers and noncommissioned officers to shoot unarmed civilians if their presence made me feel uncomfortable," Sgt. Jason Lemieux told a panel of lawmakers last Thursday in a packed public hearing on Capitol Hill. "These orders were given with the understanding that my immediate chain of command would protect our subordinates from legal repercussions." Lemieux, a former Marine who was part of the invading force that entered Baghdad in March 2003, came to Washington, D.C., with Iraq Veterans Against the War, weeks after the fifth anniversary of President George Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" to tell Congress enough is enough. Invited by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., the veterans spoke firmly and eloquently before members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, telling stories that were just "the tip of the iceberg," as Lemieux put it, but which nevertheless offered a frightening range of accounts: violent house raids, the killings of innocent people, "drop weapons" used to make dead civilians look like insurgents, racism in the ranks, and their own process of dehumanization as they became inured to the humanity of those who they were supposedly sent to "liberate."

The morning was infused with a sense of urgency. "Every day that the occupation continues, more men, women and children will be killed, maimed, or forced to flee their country as refugees," said Kelly Dougherty, executive director of IVAW, in introductory remarks. "More veterans will return home with lifelong scars, emotional and physical, with little support to help them readjust.

"Many," she added, "will fall victim to suicide." Indeed, of the nine veterans who testified that day, two said they had tried to kill themselves after returning home.

Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered in Silver Spring, Md., to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, "Winter Soldier on the Hill" was designed to drive home the human cost of the war and occupation -- this time, to the very people in charge of doing something about it. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the rest of Congress was debating the next round of funding for the war -- whether to approve more than $160 billion in additional taxpayer money to continue the occupation. "I think you know that the very issue that we're talking about today is on the House floor today," Woolsey noted -- a partial explanation for the small hearing room and the small handful of lawmakers who showed up. Even for those politicians who have consistently criticized the war, however, a group like IVAW -- whose platform includes immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq, including contractors, as well as paying reparations to the Iraqi people -- is a politically risky ally. "I think we're generally viewed as too radical for most politicians," one IVAW field organizer and former military intelligence officer, T.J. Buonomo, said after the hearing. And this is a Congress where political courage has been in lethally short supply.